Before the Flood

[Andrew Martin]

Continuing play in Vincent's (Lumpley Games) Before the Flood. I'm a player in this, our group has five players total (including GM). The land is a medieval fantasy setting, where we run conventional fantasy characters using a variant of my Swift rules (this session has modified FA rules intended to reduce FA hording).

Even though the gods have been only having 15 minutes sessions at the start of each four hour game session, the gods seem to get much more done than the mortal characters! :) For example, my goddess, Ester, with Domains of Youth, Healing and Love has traded use of Heal for use of Vitality of Lythander (morning lord); traded use of Heal for use of Plague for Curing only of Death (god); and traded use of limited Heal for Hiding lovers in fields  of Phaon. Meanwhile my god, Zyrkul, god of Darkness, Murder, Assasins, Haste & Bad Luck, has got another convert from the PCs, granting the power of Haste in exchange for one murder per month and being an obvious follower.

The previous game session, Ester created servitors to spread love throughout the land (it was spring); sent visions to her favoured followers to visit the dwarves, as the gods were bored with the land and wanted some action; and made more deals with other gods. Other players did much the same as well.

In the game session as PCs, we fought a large creatue (like a cave troll from LotR), suffered heat exhaustion, and then destroyed some more undead and killed their controller, a wizardess. We're trying to find a sage in his castle/dungeon; he seems to have some strange guests. Our plague priest then discovered that he didn't have any control over death, which was a disappointment to the player, as he feels the character has very little offensive power as plague took a while to take effect. This problem reveals a weak point in Swift, which hasn't got effective fighting rules yet; and the GM's limit on Death's power as there are four gods involved in this area (it's very complicated!). Our plague/death priest can't affect undead. It's a point for gods to discuss next session and try to resolve. Also, we still need to integrate god and priest miracles; haven't done magic yet, either!